


Golems

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Assimilation, Character Study, Ficlet, Folklore, Gen, Jewish!Starks, Judaism, Not quite a headcanon, Not quite an AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-09 02:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15256941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: He names himselfStarkbecause he wants it to be true.Stark, he figures, is the American forShtark, which is Yiddish forStrong, and that’s the one thing the thirteen year-old-boy who will one day be known as Howard Stark Sr. wants to be.Neither Russia nor America were Prauge; perhaps here, if they wanted Strong Men, they'd have to become them themselves.





	Golems

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Kaddish](https://archiveofourown.org/works/530087) by [Vongchild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vongchild/pseuds/Vongchild). 



> A note on Hebrew in this piece: the couple times I use Hebrew transliteration, I use the Ashkenazi pronunciation, which European immigrants from the early twentieth-century would have been familiar with, rather than the Sephardic pronunciation that most Jews in America and Israel are taught today.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

He names himself _Stark_ because he wants it to be true. _Stark_ , he figures, is the American for _Shtark_ , which is Yiddish for _Strong_ , and that’s the one thing the thirteen-year-old boy (not a man, not yet, no matter what those Old World traditions say,) who will one day be known as Howard Stark Sr. wants to be. When he arrives at Ellis Island, alone, he leaves his old name in Odessa where he tries to leave his parents’ corpses. Instead, he carries with him the bedtime stories about Strong Clay Not-Quite-Men that Rabbi Loew rose from the Vltava River to protect them from those that wished them harm—stories that stuck with him in ways that _Tanakh_ never did. 

(He’d wondered, at the beginning, when the smell of his parents’ blood was still fresh in his nose, where the Golem had been for _them_ , in Odessa, during all the pograms. And, even if the Golem had been too late to protect his parents and the Rabbi and everyone else that those _goyim_ had slaughtered, why it wasn’t here now to avenge them. But, Howard concluded, Russia wasn’t Prauge. Perhaps, here, if he wanted a Strong Man, he’d have to become one himself.)

(Strong Man. In Yiddish: _Shtarker Mensh_. In American: Howard Stark.)

* * *

Years later, Howard Stark Jr. will wonder if Erskine ever thought himself Rabbi Loew, if Steve, Irish-Catholic upbringing notwithstanding, ever felt clay in his bones.

* * *

Howard Stark Jr. is raised on stories of the Golem instead of _Tanakh_ , and Tony Stark is raised on stories of Captain America instead of those.

(Howard Jr. might never admit it, but, in all ways but one, they amount to much the same thing.)

There’s a sense of déjà vu that he can’t quite place, that he chalks up to the altitude and the air pressure, the second time Tony puts on the Suit. The first time had been to save his own skin, but the second is to defend innocent people, and there’s something familiar there he can’t identify. For the briefest moment, he wonders if his father would be proud of him now, finally, if he’s similar enough to Captain America to finally warrant anything other than a raised eyebrow or casual disdain.

(Howard Jr. was always proud, but didn’t see much point in saying it. And if he were to see his son now, he’d think of Steve, true, but he’d think of older stories too. Iron, after all, isn’t that much different from clay.)

* * *

Neither Russia nor America were Prague, Howard Sr. thought. If he wanted a Strong Man, he’d have to become one himself. 

This wasn’t the Forties, Tony thought that first time in Afghanistan and every time he put on the Suit thereafter. If he wanted a Strong Man, he’d have to become one himself.

* * *

In the stories, Rabbi Loew was a pious man, carved the Hebrew word אמת— _emes_ , meaning _truth_ —into the Golem’s forehead as a sort of gesture to and reminder of the Almighty, the True God. Everyone knew that a mere man couldn’t create life, and heaven forfend that anyone thought that Rabbi Loew was trying to imitate the Divine. And perhaps it was a reminder to the Golem, too, that, in defending His people, it was fighting for God. 

Once, during the War, when Steve is in that costume that was converted into a uniform, Howard looks up at his helmet and the letter plastered there and thinks: _Huh_. They’re not that different, he supposes, the English letter _A_ and the Hebrew letter א— _aleph_. In some cases, they even make the same sound. (Though Howard’s not quite sure how he knows that, the way his father taught him to always look forward and never back, to leave all that Old World nonsense, languages included, in Europe.) Perhaps it’s a reminder for all of them, that letter on Steve’s forehead, that this wasn’t just an ego-project of Erskine’s, that this is and was always about fighting for something bigger, defending people who couldn’t defend themselves. And perhaps it’s a reminder for Steve himself—as if he ever needed it—of what he’s fighting for. A for America and everything it stands for. It’s the same story, just that the Golem this time is fighting for something more universal. Or at least a different type of particular.

When Tony dons his Suits, there’s no word or letter or insigne on his forehead. No one’s ever called him pious, and they never will. He doesn’t think he’s God—despite what other people say—though he knows that given the right materials and a little electricity, he can breathe life into anything. (One day, Ultron will make him regret this.) And he needs no reminder on his _head_ to tell him to defend the defenseless; the blue electric pulse of his heart whispers of Yinsen and his dying act—his last words—with every beat, especially when he wears the Suit, and that’s more than sufficient.

(One day, Loki will try to steal this drive from him, to convert it into something else, something awful, and it's this apparatus on Tony's heart that will stop him.)

* * *

When Howard Stark Sr. was a boy, he’d wondered, even if the Golem had been too late to protect his parents and the Rabbi and everyone else that those _goyim_ had slaughtered, why it hadn’t come to avenge them.

 _If we can’t protect the Earth,_ Tony Stark tells Loki. _You can be damn well sure we’ll avenge it._

* * *

From the depths of the Vltava River, Rabbi Loew raised the Golem, אמת— _emes_ on its head like a rally cry.

From the flat Midtown concrete, Tony Stark raises Avengers Tower, an _A_ gleaming from its spire, electric blue like his heartbeats, like Cap’s helmet, like a _tallis_ with _tekhelis_ strings, like a six-pointed star.

**Author's Note:**

> More information on the legend of the Golem of Prague can be found [here](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-golem).
> 
> This work is, as noted, heavily inspired by AO3 user Vongchild's work _Kaddish,_ though I believe I've made it my own. While I use the same basic conceit, I change a few details. For instance, in Vongchild's piece, Howard Stark's family are Polish Jews, while I've made them Russian Jews, and I've also had Howard Stark Sr. come to America in 1905 to correspond with the Odessa Pogram, rather than 1901. On a more thematic level, I think I've sort of written the converse to Vongchild's piece--while _Kaddish_ is about what's lost in the assimilation process, this piece is about what is retained.
> 
> This piece has also been a little inspired by the novel _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay_ by Micheal Chabon and [this post](http://averagemastermind.tumblr.com/post/145010674708/nativepeopleproblems-prettyprettyprincette) by tumblr users prettyprettyprincette and averagemastermind, both of which discuss the influence of the Golem folktales on the emergence of the superhero genre.
> 
> A couple vocab notes:
> 
>  _Goyim_ means non-Jews.
> 
>  _Tanakh_ is the name of the Hebrew Bible.
> 
> A _tallis_ is a ritual prayer shawl worn by Jews. Traditionally, it had fringes dyed with a particular bright blue dye called _tekhelis._ (There's actually some really interesting history about tekhelis, which can be found [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekhelet) if you're interested.)
> 
>  
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! Please consider leaving a comment! :)


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